Beady Eyes
by skwirelygurli
Summary: Austin confides in Dougie the dolphin. Auslly.


**Beady Eyes, an Austin and Ally oneshot**

**I do not own Austin and Ally. For Maddiegirl56's prompt. Please enjoy, and review!**

Who needs a diary when they have a stuffed dolphin to confide in?

Certainly not Austin Moon.

It had started out completely innocent. They were sitting on the bed, a bowl of popcorn by his side, a movie playing on his laptop. He'd been laughing, Dougie tucked under his arm.

Then, the noises.

Creeping footsteps and squeaky stairs and quiet voices. He paused the movie. Somebody had broken in, and there was no way they were going to get away with it.

He really should have stashed a baseball bat in his room. Threatening someone with a guitar is not nearly as effective.

'Oh, you broke into my home? Allow me to serenade you with my new hit single.'

Had that been true, he would have had dozens of girls crawling through his window. The thought should have excited him, but lately his mind had been focused on one girl. She was haunting his dreams, with that smile and laugh and-

He stopped as to not get lost in another reverie. There was an intruder afoot. Afeet? It didn't sound like they were hopping.

That word didn't sound right. It'd be best to go back to panicking.

Creeping up to his door, with a shoe in his hand, he heard the voices get louder. He flung open the door.

"Austin honey, what are you doing?" his mother asked. His shoe was raised in mid-air, his jaw slackened.

Great, he almost squished his mother like a giant bug.

Swiss cheese had less holes than his plan did.

"I thought you guys weren't going to be home until later." He let his arm down, banging his elbow against the door frame.

"Your father forgot the tickets."

Mr. Moon appeared, holding them up to signify that he had gotten them. "Ready?"

They departed, leaving Austin once again alone with Dougie. He could have sworn his beady little eyes were laughing at him.

He grabbed the dolphin by the sides of his face and held him at eye level.

"That didn't just happen."

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It was late, maybe two or three in the morning when he got home. They had been pulling an all nighter, writing a duet.

He turned on the light to find Dougie where he had left him, on his chair. The chair that he had left pointing at the door in his haste to leave yesterday.

It was like one of those movies where the kid creeps home, only to find that their parent had stayed up in an arm chair, waiting to ground them. One catch though. Dougie wasn't his parent, and without a voice, he couldn't scold him.

Those beady eyes did him in. His stare read, 'Where have you been?'

"I was with Ally," he explained. It was barely audible as he tried not to wake his parents.

'Ooh, on a date?'

"We were writing a song. It was not a date." He tugged his shirt over his head. What was he doing, defending himself against the accusations of a stuffed toy?

He needed sleep. Then everything would be back to normal.

Nuzzling Dougie under the pit of his arm, he carried him over to the bed. He slipped out of his pants. They dropped to the floor, and the dolphin dove after them.

Fine, he could stay there tonight. That would teach him for questioning his motives.

Sleep. He definitely needed sleep.

_(the page breaks here)_

The door slammed behind him. It was loud, and had his mother been home she would have scolded him.

Dougie took over.

Those darned beady eyes, conveying emotion despite a lack of pupils or movement. He'd thought sleep would have been the cure. But he felt as though he was getting reprimanded by a stuffed toy.

Maybe it was the fact that he had fallen off the bed.

Flipping him right side up, he apologized. "Sorry. It's just Ally has a new crush, and-"

He stopped himself. He was not going to confide in Dougie again. What he wanted to do was call Dez, his best friend, and talk to him. Best friends are there to help each other out.

He beseeched him to go on.

"You ever feel like you really like someone, but you don't want to ruin your friendship, so you don't tell them, but then they like someone else, and it ends up messing everything up anyway?" Austin fell back onto his bed. "Of course not. You're just a stuffed animal."

Peering down at the beady eyes, as he had moved the dolphin to rest upon his stomach, he felt the urge to say sorry. Which was utterly ridiculous, seeing as how all he was filled with was stuffing. It's not like he was filled with a heart saying one thing, and a mind saying another.

"Wanna trade spots with me?" Then Dougie could worry about why his heart was tugging him towards Ally, while his mind pushed him away. He could deal with the way his lungs drew less air when she walked into the room.

He could also deal with the fact that his stomach was rumbling.

He was craving a tuna fish sandwich.

Maybe he had better eat it in the kitchen. Away from Dougie, so he couldn't go on about how this guy was built like a model, chiseled out of marble, like Ally had said. Personally, he thought he was chiseled out of cheese. Every word that dripped out of the boy's mouth was so cheesy.

Had she fallen for the words or the image? Any hint to duplicate it. Any notion that could make him get an upgrade in her mental ranking.

Thing is, best friends and boy friends aren't on the same ladder. They're adjacent, one a few steps higher. It takes quite a leap to get across. One false move, and splat to the bottom.

He didn't want to go splat to the bottom.

He wanted to go haha! to the top. Then he'd cling to that ladder for dear life, no fear of heights required.

Fear of losing her was motivation enough.

_(the page breaks here)_

There was a bounce in his step. He bounded into the room, plucking Dougie off the end of his unmade bed. It had been unkempt from a night of bad dreams. He had woken clutching his dolphin companion, scrambling out of bed when he noted the time.

He hugged him, a smile breaking across his face.

The beady eyes implored him for answers.

"So that guy," the one he had spent the rest of the night detailing after brushing the tuna off his breath, "came into Sonic Boom today, and he was a total jerk to Ally."

Any normal friend would feel terrible that he had treated her the way he did. He ripped apart her outfit, orally, as he couldn't bare to look at her for long, let alone touch her, her hair, and every facet of her personality that made him fall hard for her. She poked at her ice cream, not laughing when Dez got a chocolate mustache.

In other words, she was upset.

He wasn't happy that she was upset. He was happy that her crush had, well, been crushed. No longer was he on his pedestal. The bipolarity of it all, from cheesy to rude was odd.

Not that he was complaining. One less person to pull him off the ladder.

If beady eyes could narrow in disappointment, they were.

"I know. But I defended her and she kissed my cheek." Normally these would be thoughts that he kept to himself. With Dougie around, he was spilling more of the truth than he'd ever had.

It felt liberating.

Because stuffed toys can't spill secrets.

_(the page breaks here)_

Triplets. There were three of him, all identical in looks, with distinct personalities. Cheesy, rude, and sports oriented.

Dougie waited on the pillow for his update.

"Is today over with yet?" Unlike their brother, the two boys doted on Ally all afternoon. One stayed to her left, one to her right.

Where was Austin going to stand?

"Actually, there's six hours and thirty four minutes left," she responded, checking the time on her phone. Ally entered the room.

"Oh, hey."

"Hey. Everything okay?"

"Yeah. I thought you were going to dinner with Huey and Dewey," he prompted. Neither name was correct, but he hadn't taken the time to care.

She took Dougie off the pillow and smoothed him down. "It didn't work out between us."

That would have been a very inappropriate time for a victory dance.

"That's too bad." He bit the inside of his lip to keep from smiling. Add that to the list of things that Dougie can take from him.

The inability to hide his emotions.

He give that away in a heartbeat.

_(the page breaks here)_

He came home late, flooding the room with artificial light.

That night, the dolphin was nowhere to be seen. He pawed through a mound of sheets that had yet to be untangled, under his desk. Nothing.

Stripping down to his boxers, he opened the closet door. There was Dougie, atop the hamper.

"There you are. I must have left you here after I got dressed this morning." He had scanned the rack twice trying to find the perfect outfit to ask Ally out in. He had hoped that bringing his confidant with him would calm his nerves. He could spill his secrets, without fear of them getting out, and clear his head, figure things out.

He balled his shirt up and tossed it in the hamper.

The dolphin rested his head against his bare chest. Those beady eyes requested an update.

"I don't know Dougie. I tried to ask her out, but she misunderstood and Dez and Trish wanted to come too." He ran a hand through his hair, careful not to drop the dolphin.

A thought crossed his mind, almost like telepathy. It was completely his, most likely from voicing his thoughts aloud. It seemed that the more he talked to that toy, the more he understood. Essentially he was having a conversation with himself. Himself in dolphin form.

These things sounded a lot less bizarre when he was younger. What's wrong with a teenage boy having a friendship with a stuffed animal?

As far as he's concerned, nothing.

So he continued the conversation.

"It was not a double date. Dez and Trish don't like each other like that. And Ally still thinks of me as just a friend." He threw a sheet over his body.

Those beady eyes saw what happened last night. It was obvious that he was wrong.

If only Dougie could comprehend. All he could do was sit there and listen.

Sometimes that's all a person ever needs.

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His body collapsed onto the bed. Feeling a bump under his back, he went to adjust the sheets.

The dolphin escaped from the tight quarters.

"Sorry Dougie, it's been a long day." He cuddled him to his cheek, catching a whiff of her stench still lingering on his body. It helped and hurt.

Helped, because she always made him feel better.

Hurt, because he had made a huge mistake, only to cover it with a second mistake.

Stomach growling at a missed breakfast, he had entered the Sonic Boom. She, noticing his irritability and hunger, one the cause of the other, offered to take him to Jack's Flaps, where she ordered him a stack of banana pancakes, and proceeded to pay.

"'You're awesome. I love you...for this.' I cannot believe I said that." The late addition to the phrase had been painfully awkward. He could have left it as is. Best friends can express their love freely, specially over free food.

Even Marge had sensed the awkwardness from her spot behind the counter, filling the napkin dispensers.

"The look on her face, it was so, I don't know. She looked sad." He frowned. She had tried to smile, but he had seen through it.

It crushed him that he hurt her.

Tomorrow he would make amends.

_(the page breaks here)_

Beady eyes aren't the only ones to coerce the truth out of him.

"You seem nervous," she commented, straightening a violin on display.

"I do?" The tone of his voice confirmed it.

Her soft eyes met his. "Is everything alright? You've been acting strange all week."

Accidentally grabbing her hand in the movie theater was not strange. He thought they had agreed on taking the left arm rests, not the right. Unless she meant the jealousy, and the pancakes, and the fact that he'd said more to his stuffed dolphin that his own best friend.

Okay, he could see where she was coming from.

"Ally, there's something I need to get off my chest."

"What is it?"

He heard Dez come in, and there wasn't the time to mess around with botched love confessions. All the words he had practiced on Dougie flew from his mind.

His mouth found a new form of expression. New to them anyway.

"Whoa-ho, what's going on here?"

Magic. That's what was going on there. The way her hand slipped into his, bridging the gap between the ladders. That one leap, from best friend to boyfriend, void of splatting to the bottom. Dougie would be so proud.

He'd tell him later.

But first, he had to steal one more kiss.


End file.
